INDIANAPOLIS - This week, it is just a football game. Well, it is not just any football game. Andrew Luck will be playing in the AFC championship, and he has never seen anything quite like that, but neither will he be dealing with the possibility of defrocking a local saint.

Mercifully, the atmosphere surrounding the Colts has returned to business at hand, which is trying to advance to the Super Bowl. In advance of last week's divisional playoff game against Denver, it would have been impossible for a visitor to this city to recognize which pack of horses most concerned the Indy media.

But Peyton Manning is done now, looking every bit the victim of the Colts' 24-13 Sunday win in Denver, and Tom Brady is just another Hall of Fame-bound quarterback who must be dealt with by Luck and the Colts this weekend in New England.

"In my mind, that's not a benchmark, I guess," Luck said Wednesday. "It's about the Colts beating - hopefully beating - the Patriots. It is a team game. I've never viewed it as quarterback vs. quarterback. Obviously, he's a stud. I have the utmost respect for what he does, what he's done, what he still does. He's a great role model for any quarterback at any level playing the position. But it's a team game, and to me it's as simple as that."

In fact, it might not be that simple for Luck for a number of years because of the way in which he entered the league . . . and the precise spot where he entered it.

He still is being judged by Colts fans wondering if their franchise made the correct choice in allowing Manning to depart in order to open a position for the player they chose with the No. 1 pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. And if he's not being measured against No. 18, he is being assessed as to where he stands against other greats at his position. That's particularly an issue given the convergence of Luck, Manning and Brady in this sequence of games on the way to Super Sunday.

Kicker Adam Vinatieri, who won Super Bowls with both the Patriots and Colts and is trying to get to the sixth of his career, is in the uncommon position of having been each player's teammate; has been able to see how each handles his business and manages the responsibility of running an offense. He has seen the similarities among the three, "the arm strength . . . the ability to process fast . . . their work ethic."

It has been a little different with Luck, though. The other two were not instantly successful; Manning was the No.1 overall pick in 1998, started in his first season and was an all-rookie quarterback, but the Colts lost close too often and wound up 3-13. Unlike the other two, Brady was a draft afterthought, unselected until round six, and he was a backup his rookie year. He became sarter after Drew Bledsoe was injured in Week 3 of 2001.

"That's the great thing about Andrew as a young guy, first day he came in leading the OTAs, and he looked like a six-year guy. You're like, 'This guy's a rookie?'" Viniatieri said. "He's already like calling audibles and stuff. He's not supposed to even know this yet, and he's already doing things. His learning curve was very non-existent. It was just like - zip, he's there."

And now he's here.

In each of Luck's professional seasons, the Colts have made the playoffs, and each time they've made incremental progress: Losing the wild-card game his first year; winning it the second before losing to the Patriots in the divisional round, and now winning two before playing for the conference title.

He would seem to be more ready for the challenge this time, and more responsible for its arrival.

Luck attempted more than 40 passes in playoff wins over both Cincinnati and Denver, continuing a season-long trend in which the more the Colts relied on his arm, the better their results. They are 8-2 when he has thrown that often this season.

"I would say that Andrew is a special enough player that you could say, 'OK, what do you think is best here?'" said Colts tight end Coby Fleener, a teammate since their days at Stanford. "We don't do that as much as we probably could, but he's a special enough guy that if you tell him to throw the ball he's going to complete it."

Luck's most obvious deficiency in previous postseasons has been a tendency to throw interceptions, which may be the product of his determination to make something out of every play called. After throwing seven in two 2013 playoff games, he got through the Cincinnati game clean but then had two picked off by Denver. Each was far enough downfield to be written off as an "arm punt," but coach Chuck Pagano is not interested in that sort of rationalization.

"We don't want to throw them. He doesn't want to throw them," Pagano said. "Maybe he throws it 60 yards and the guy falls down and you say that's as good as a punt? We don't want it."

Luck has not beaten the Patriots in his career - he has not really come close. He and the Colts have lost three times by a composite score of 149-66.

"They do a great job of taking away your strengths, in a sense," Luck said. "Every down is a chess match, is a battle. They do a great job of scheming, and they do a great job having great players. They have a bunch of studs out there."

And yet Luck allowed that he is energized by the magnitude of the challenge. He got to talk mostly football Wednesday, not about passing torches and lost legends, and it seemed to invigorate him.

"I think there's a competitive spirit in all of us that says, 'Hey, the harder it is the better,'" Luck said. "Let's go try and make it happen."